Greasy Fork

I’ve noticed in certain circumstances, the AO3 editing flow puts you in a situation where this script doesn’t load.

The sequence of steps seems to be this:
1. Create a new work and fill out the form
2. Preview the work (without saving as draft first)
3. From the Preview, choose Edit
4. URL is https://archiveofourown.org/works/workid (no /edit)

I don’t know if AO3 has changed the flow/URLs recently (this is my typical flow for posting same-day, but I haven’t done that in a while) or if I’ve hit some sort of AO3 bug—and I don’t know if there’s anything you can do about it; I presume it’s unwise to load the script on all works/* pages, and it seems that Saving as Draft and then editing that gets an /edit URL.

Oh, but! Save as Draft, then Preview, then Edit again gets back in the same situation, URL is https://archiveofourown.org/works/workid (no /edit). So I think this is an AO3 change (perhaps bug?) that the Edit button on the Preview page doesn’t get you an /edit URL, or my memory sucks…

Yep, that's an unfortunate thing with AO3, and why the Info has this sentence:

You can preview your work - but if you want to go back to continue changing tags, please use the ⇦ back button in your browser. Unfortunately AO3 does some weird things that I can't really work around, which means that using the "Edit" button on the Preview page stops the script from working.

The "Edit" button is evil. XD It's not new, it's been that way for a while, but unless you have a script such as this you probably wouldn't look at the URL and notice.

Any solution would require that the script starts running on all work pages even while just reading, and I wasn't a fan of that. I'll keep thinking about it, though. Thank you for the bug report, and sorry that I don't have a better fix available right now!

Oops, sorry; I apparently skipped right over that paragraph. I did double-check the Known Limitations section, though!

Yeah, it would seem weird if it ran on every /work page. I wonder if it would be worth raising an issue with AO3 about that Edit button not giving an /edit URL when (as far as I could tell futzing around last night) every other Edit button does?

Thanks for the follow-up—and for the script itself; it really is a huge help 🙏

no problem, I'm now mentioning that in the Limitations as well so it's easier to find :)